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US TV Airing
TG Documentary

Contributed by Stef Matthews
via GenderPac
September 17, 1998

The Arts and Entertainment Network (A&E) will cover the gender movement in an unprecedented documentary that highlights the growth of transgender awareness into a political movement to end gender oppression. The program will air at 9 p.m. on Monday, 5 Oct 98.

In a press release today, A&E said of the project, "Building on human portraits, the program takes a broad look at the new and fast-growing movement to combat what is known as 'gender oppression,' highlighting the nation's most notorious transsexual killings and a battle in Congress to include transsexuals in the Federal Hate Crimes Act. 'Investigative reports: Transgender Revolution' portrays a subculture that challenges our most deeply held notions about what it means to be a 'real' man or woman."

"Not only is this the first time anyone has given us a full hour on national TV, but this marks the first time a producer has eschewed the usual soft-core human interest story and moved to cover us as a valid civil rights movement," said Riki Anne Wilchins, Executive Director of GenderPAC. "With the Time magazine article and the recent NY Times' features, I think we are, at last, turning a corner."

The A&E producer, David Heilbroner, has offered to provide working journalists with advance copies of the program for review and evaluation. "We wanted to look at the real issues of the transgender community," he said. "We wanted to take this beyond the tabloids' focus, to portray the heart and soul of a community that is demand- ing its rights."

Women Actress:
Being A Guy Ain't Easy

Contributed by Susan Hall
via Detroit News and Free Press
September 13, 1998

Julianna Margulies, "ER" star, on what she discovered when she disguised herself as a man and went barhopping in New York, in "Marie Claire" magazine:

"This is a lot harder than I thought it would be. It's very intimidating when all these guys are in packs. It's amazing to me. As an actor, I thought I could do anything. And when it's scripted, I can. But this is really hard. This is real life - there's much more at risk, all of a sudden. I thought you guys had it easy, but you don't - always having to be the one to make the move. It's much easier being the person making the choice - as the woman being hit on.

Dolls, Drawings Of TS Artist Cause Stir

Contributed by Susan Hall
via Detroit News and Free Press
September 13, 1998

Review: "It's all about ME, Not You" - Through Nov. 1, Cranbrook Art Museum, 1221 N. Woodward, Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, 11:00 AM to 5:00 PM Tuesday-Saturday, open until 9:00 PM Thursday. Phone 1-248-645-3323.

From the time she was a young boy in Holly [Michigan], the late artist Greer Lankton had an attachment to dolls. She began making them, and they became an emotional outlet as she struggled to understand herself. They later became the vehicle launching her artistic career.

Greer Lankton was born in 1958 as Greg Lankton, a female trapped in a male body. She lived that way until age 21, when surgery freed her to become the woman she longed to be.

That journey was mostly dark and filled with confusion, pain and self-abuse. Making dolls emerged as a potent means of self-expression. Some dolls were life-sized, full-figured, happy characters. As she fell prey to anorexia and drug addiction, however, Lankton's dolls became painfully thin, hauntingly macabre.

They were first shown in small New York galleries. When they began attracting attention, they were included in more prestigious New York and Venice shows in 1995.

The following year Lankton spent at the Mattress Factory in Pittsburgh, laboring over a different art installation that approximated her one-room studio/living space in Chicago. The scaled-down replica is complete with aluminum siding, lighting, picnic table, umbrella, Astroturf, busty sculptural lawn art and her interior collections.

"It's all about ME, not you" allows viewers literally to step into Lankton's troubled world. Inside the dimly lit, claustrophobic space is an amazing collection of Lankton's dolls, drawings, photographs and artwork. Dominating the room is a life-sized skeletal figure with a tortured face that lies in a bed overflowing with hundreds of prescription pill bottles - testimony to her battle with drug addiction. A nearby scale bearing the words 'Danger: 3 numerals are a bit too much.' squarely tells of her anorexia.

Several sections of wall space are given over as shrines to those few celebrities Lankton could identify with - the androgynous rocker Patti Smith and the notorious drag queen Candy Darling, who starred in Andy Warhol movies. One section is devoted to glamorous photographs, including many nudes, of Lankton before and after her surgery. Another features religious portraits that harken back to her upbringing as the youngest child of a Presbyterian minister.

In between the haunting images and anorexic dolls with their powerful messages are campy touches that reveal Warhol's influence. For example, a collection of troll dolls sits on a lower shelf.

Perhaps most touching among the lot are Lankton's drawings, much more personal and heartrending than her dolls. With a fine hand attuned to human anatomy, Lankton renders graceful dancers and acrobats in motion. In others, she expresses the hurt and confusion of being caught in the wrong body. In one, she crouches in the corner of a beauty parlor, a little boy watching his sister have her hair curled, wishing for the same treatment. Another important piece of Lankton's life always was the unconditional love of her parents. Lankton's mother, for instance, was there during her transsexual surgery, paid for by the church health insurance after meetings between her father and the church board. And it was her parents, during their weekly visit to her apartment, who found her dead at 90 pounds in her small room just one month after the Mattress Factory show opened. The multilayered installation may be difficult to view, but it's remarkable for what Lankton dares to share of her tortured, vulnerable souls as shoe works to bridge real life and art. Clearly, Cranbrook's risk is the viewer's gain. Accompanying this installation are two lectures. Barbara Luderowski and Michael Olijnyk of the Mattress Factory will speak at 6:30 PM Friday [9/18/98]. Lankton's parents, the Reverend William and Lynn Lankton will speak at 1:00 PM September 20."

TG Comedian
Parodies Pols

Contributed by Elizabeth Parker
via Australian Associated Press
September 12, 1998

SYDNEY - After declaring himself the "mother of this nation", Pauline Pantsdown has urged Australians to take him seriously or he would be forced to apply for the single mothers' pension to support 18 million offspring. The future of "all my Astrayan children" was the focus of the aspiring senator and cross-dresser Pantsdown's Sydney campaign launch today.

The heavily made-up and coiffed Pantsdown, an over-the-top send-up of One Nation's Pauline Hanson, is standing for the Senate in NSW as an independent. With his chart-topping hit song titled 'I Don't Like It' pumping loudly down the crowded street of the Darlinghurst launch, the impersonator's campaign launch had few serious moments. But in between the parody he urged Australians to cast a vote against "the Hanson-Howard coalition" and be wary of a race-based election.

He said the October 3 election was in danger of remaining focused on tax with racial issues at threat of being forgotten. The 36-year-old university lecturer has been quoted as saying he is not fooling himself that he will win a spot in the federal parliament, but hopes to make his preferences count. He was yet to study preference options, beyond "casting out the Hanson-Howard coalition". His launch was marked with the formal presentation of a ten-point plan of nine ideas, almost all of which had the prefix: "This is the most important issue facing Astraya today".

It proposed inviting Aborigines from other countries to Australia, because there were not enough here and we need more to truly celebrate diversity. In regard to education and immigration, the concern was the decline in mathematical skills, particularly in regard to counting immigration numbers. "If people say that the balance has swung too far in favour of Asians, who make up less than five per cent of population, they need to go back to school and learn their times tables," he said. "I think 127 per cent of Astrayans will back me on that."

With the sincere belief Pauline Hanson would not be elevated to power, the only advice Pantsdown had for the controversial politician was, "Pauline, try to get a little bit more subtle on the make-up; people are saying things; and maybe get rid of the racist rubbish and xenophobic statements as well." Pantsdown's career got off to a rocky start earlier this year when his first Hanson pop parody was withdrawn after objections from his alter ego. But he and his new music video are now getting television exposure, and are reportedly attracting overseas interest.

Lawsuit Victory
Over Haters

Contributed by Elizabeth Parker and Rachelle Austin
via Reuters
September 9, 1998

Michigan's Triangle Foundation is celebrating the 1st successful lawsuit against a public official for lying about gay, lesbians, bi's and transpeople.

There was good news and bad news out of the Michigan courts for Detroit's gay/lesbian/bisexual/transgender advocacy group the Triangle Foundation on September 14: on the one hand, its members were alarmed by the state Court of Appeals overturning on a technicality the second-degree murder conviction of Jonathan Schmitz in the so-called "Jenny Jones" killing of open gay Scott Amedure (which the prosecution is appealing further); on the other, they were delighted to learn that they had prevailed in their defamation lawsuit against state Representative Deborah Whyman (R-Canton) for her allegations against them in her 1996 campaign literature.

"This is an historic victory for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people everywhere," said Triangle executive director Jeffrey Montgomery. "Never before has a GLBT organization successfully sued an elected official for defamation. This should send a clear message to public officials everywhere that publishing defamatory statements about GLBT people and organizations will be challenged and that they will be held personally responsible for their intentional lies about us." Montgomery demanded a public apology from Whyman.

In a November 1996 campaign mailing piece that depicted two men facing each other, nude from the waist up, Whyman had charged that Triangle supported pedophilia, and also that it had supported her opponent, Democrat Deborah Nesbit, which would have been a violation of the group's non-profit status. The mailing to several thousand homes just two days before the election also charged that Nesbit had accepted campaign contributions from Triangle members, making her an endorser of pedophilia and "homosexual extremists" -- Whyman's favorite phrase for gay and lesbian activists -- and helped to defeat Nesbit in the election.

In February 1997, Triangle filed a complaint against Whyman on six charges of libel, slander and defamation, as Montgomery said, "Lies and intentional misinformation about gays and lesbians must be challenged whenever they are published. It is especially important to hold public officials accountable when they engage in the intentional distortion of facts and truth. They need to be held to a higher standard of integrity and responsibility." In October 1997, a panel of three mediators had agreed that Whyman's allegations were false and malicious, awarding Triangle $15,000 in damages, but Whyman rejected their non-binding decision and Triangle went on to file its lawsuit.

Wayne County Circuit Judge Susan Borman in an 18-page opinion noted that since Whyman had quoted Triangle's by-laws, it was fair to infer that she was aware of their contents and the fact that they did not "proclaim" support for sex acts involving minors. She wrote, "There is nothing beyond the rhetorical construction [that the phrase "sexual minorities" includes pedophiles] of the defendants [Whyman] that would tend to show that, in fact, plaintiffs [Triangle] have ever proclaimed support for pedophilia.... The Triangle Foundation has never published or adopted any policies or statements of support for sex between adults and children.... The court finds as a matter of law that the issue statement in the 1996 statement [campaign literature] was defamatory per se as to all

Gore Scored
By Religious Nuts

Contributed by and Elizabeth Parker
via Reuters
September 18, 1998

WASHINGTON -- Americans for Truth President Peter LaBarbera released the following statement regarding Vice President Al Gore's appearance Saturday night as a featured speaker at a gala dinner for the Human Rights Campaign (the event is at Marriott Wardman Park Hotel). The HRC is a homosexual activist group that lobbies for homosexual "marriage," "gay" adoption, pro-homosexual programs in schools, and "transgender rights" (including affirming "transgender youth"). Last February, the organization sponsored a college youth conference for "gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered" youth that featured a presentation by an actual prostitute, the showing of hard-core pornographic and sadomasochistic films, and a talk by a female-to-male transsexual activist.

"Al Gore's scheduled acceptance of an honor from the Human Rights Campaign is further proof of his hypocrisy on the issue of 'family values.' Mr. Gore has been busy currying favor with the homosexual lobby -- a wealthy constituency for his expected presidential bid. At the same time, he continues to list membership in the Southern Baptist-affiliated Mt. Vernon Baptist Church (in Arlington, VA), whose pastor -- K. Bruce Miller -- believes the Bible that homosexual behavior is a sin. Like his boss, Gore wants to have it both ways. He will campaign as a 'pro-family' candidate even as he makes a mockery of traditional and biblical beliefs on homosexuality and abortion -- beliefs that may be politically incorrect in the Democratic Party (and among some in the GOP), but which embody eternal truths," LaBarbera said.

Americans for Truth about Homosexuality, based outside Washington, D.C., is a group dedicated to opposing homosexual activism. It publishes the bimonthly Lambda Report on Homosexual Activism. Web site: www.americansfortruth.com.

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